Coventry, where she had nursed her ailing father for nearly a decade, became immortalised as “Middlemarch”, the setting for her greatest novel. Instead, adopting the pseudonym George Eliot, she poured her memories of “that hideous neighbourhood” into a series of glorious and highly profitable novels. Nuneaton and Coventry, where Eliot lived until she was 30, are both firmly lodged at the heart of Brexit BritainĪs it turned out Evans didn’t kill herself, nor did she return to the Midlands. “To live with in that hideous neighbourhood amongst ignorant bigots is impossible to me,” she spluttered. The young patriarch, who had inherited the family business from their late father, insisted that Marian make herself permanently available to their sister, Chrissie, newly widowed and struggling with too many children and not enough money. Now, though, Evans was being summoned “home” by her brother Isaac, the de facto head of the family. No longer required to rub shoulders with small-time farmers and ribbon manufacturers, these days Miss Evans was more likely to be found discussing philosophy with Emerson, gossiping about Dickens and attending concerts with her almost-fiance, the sociologist Herbert Spencer. Working as assistant editor at the prestigious Westminster Review while lodging in the Strand, Evans now considered herself a paid-up member of the liberal metropolitan intellectual elite. For the past two years the 33-year-old Nuneaton native had been forging an independent life for herself in London.
I n 1853 Marian Evans declared that she would rather kill herself than return to live in her native Warwickshire.
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